Holm is a freelance writer with speculative fiction and nonfiction publications. In this essay, Holm notes the elliptical and subtle ways that Ernaux touches on the topic of shame.

A reader picking up Annie Ernaux's memoir would expect the content to reflect the title. Such a reader might think that the book dealt directly with the shame that the twelve-year-old narrator experienced on a day in June 1952 when her father tried to kill her mother. But Ernaux is too skilled and unusual a writer to hit the reader over the head with a straighton examination of shame. Instead, Ernaux examines shame by coming at it through a number of interesting angles: class, the dynamics of a small town, memory, and the context of the processes she uses to capture her feelings about the event. Ernaux is a strategic writer who accomplishes much with her sparse and unusual...